The Coming of Age. August Part 1.

2nd August. There are auditions for the animals for the Pageant today. Only animals of guaranteed phlegmatic temperament are invited to attend. Mavis offers her cat, which has not been known to move in years. Someone else has an extremely old dog which can only limp and wheeze. The butcher, Icarus Jones, has offered to bring two of his organic pigs. Beryl Jinks, the disabled painter, who is remarkably friendly with the employees of the nearby ostrich farm, is sure she can persuade one of the lads, if not all, to bring an ostrich or two. ‘They are,’ she says, ‘very used to crowds and excitement.’ Just like Beryl Jinks.

4th August. Val calls to tell me she was certain she saw Martin yesterday and he was wearing those baggy three-quarter-length shorts with pockets down the legs that teenagers wear. I ring Alex up to tell him about this. He says ‘Cool’. I expected better than that from him. He is, after all, a policeman. Aren’t they supposed to uphold things?

Then I ring up Harriet to see how she is. She has to get up and pee four times a night. It’s good practice, I say, for getting old. Otherwise she is fine but looking forward to the time she stops work.

5th August.I manage to get hold of Sarah, with difficulty, and suggest that she, Roland and the girls come down to see the Pageant. I am sure they will like the animals in the magic spring and the children dancing. Somehow, as the phone call ends, I find I have agreed to have Alice and Letitia by themselves for this coming weekend as Sarah tells me she and Roland need some time alone together and Nanny is going on holiday. How did this happen?

7th August. Poppy rings up. There is no dining group this month as she and Julia will be away much of the time. I think they are escaping from the Pageant. I can’t see Julia or Poppy sitting on rugs at the foot of Nell’s Tump watching the pageant, let alone participating dressed as mediaeval peasant women dipping pets into Val’s Solar Cascade, even in an ironic way.

Poppy is very cheerful today and it has nothing to do with a new man. Her children have recently been contacted by their half brothers, the issue of the union between one of her horrible ex-husbands and the Latvian dog trainer he went off with. This was effected via that website on the Internet where you are reunited with people you used to know. Poppy’s son reported back to her that the half-brothers have left home and rarely see their parents who scarcely speak to each other and are in debt. It sounded quite dire. Although normally very kind-hearted, Poppy’s spirits have been raised by this news. It serves them both right, she says sweetly.

I am waiting for something to happen to Martin and Lolita, although my fantasies about the downfall of Lolita are usually restricted to her developing tennis elbow or having an allergic reaction to one of those expensive food supplements. She and Martin, Alex said, had taken up cycling, though how Martin manages with his baggy long shorts, I can’t think. Perhaps he will get them caught in his spokes and they will both tumble off their expensive new bicycles into a ditch full of nettles while cycling round the Buckinghamshire lanes?

Poppy goes on to say that her life is getting rather complicated at the moment. ‘Work or men?’ I ask.

‘It’s Roger. Oh, Jess, he won’t leave me alone. I keep telling him I have to work; I have to earn some money. The taxi firm makes him do all sorts of bizarre shifts and as soon as he has finished, he comes round here. It could be two in the morning, eight at night or lunchtime. I don’t think he’s right for me.’

That’s why she is going to be away she tells me. She is going to spend a week or two in London with her daughter.

‘What about the interior designing?’

‘Oh, a bit easier really. I can do research at the V & A and all the wholesalers are there.’
I feel a little down after this. Am I envious of Poppy’s glamorous life, full of incident and emotional seesaws? She has an exciting life and I decided that I didn’t want one. Perhaps I should start affirming again?

8th August. Sarah delivers the children and she and Roland depart for an expensive hotel in the New Forest.

After lunch, which finds most of its way on to the carpet, I decide to take my granddaughters to the park. I run along the pavements with Alice sitting in the pushchair wearing an unseasonable large fur hat, a tutu and wellingtons. She has refused to wear anything else (Should I make her do things she doesn’t want to? This is one of the problems of modern day grandmotherhood. I don’t want to annoy Sarah.)

Alice is screaming like a banshee, ‘Faster, granny, Faster.’ and Letitia is standing on the bar at the back. This is great fun. I just wish it was me in the pushchair. Mother has the right idea. I can see the attraction of it.

Letitia, who should be in the push chair, refuses to stand on the back bar any longer but insists on walking; she goes very slowly and into the gateways of every house we pass to see if there is an interesting dustbin and even more exciting, a dog or cat. Alice goes into a sulk because we are making very slow progress.

Eventually we get to the park and head for the toddler slide. Letitia wants to slide down but Alice wants to walk up it and screams when Letitia’s feet hit her in the face. We then go to the swings and I devise a way of pushing them both at the same time by running from one swing to the other while they shriek with delight. I must say it is easier than it was trying to please Martin even though as physically exhausting.

At night I put them both in the spare bed and tuck them up. They fight so I put Letitia in my bed. Alice wants to be in my bed too and cries. Instead of spending a quiet hour with the television before total collapse, I get undressed and retire to bed, one on each side, and read ‘Tom Kitten’ and ‘The Three Little Pigs’ over and over again. I had forgotten how gruesome these stories are and worry about their effects on my grandchildren. I wish I could say I worried about long-term trauma, but actually I am more concerned about tonight.

Luckily I sleep in a double bed. This is entirely due to Val. When Martin insisted that I sell the house and move out, I was going to get a single bed but she said I absolutely mustn’t. There was something very dispiriting about a single bed; it would be like being a nun she said and giving up all hope.

‘Well, I am going to have to be a like a nun from now on. I have to face it’ I said. ‘The chances of me ever sharing a bed with anybody again are zilch.’

I hadn’t any grandchildren at that time.

The next morning I decide to stay at home. We play in the garden. Many of the house contents get transported to the garden by order of Alice who is very like her mother, to play parts in an elaborate game in which Terry, who delivers the weekly box of organic vegetables to them in London, seems to have a leading but invisible, role. Quite a large part of the garden seems to find its way into the house as a sort of quid pro quo. In the late afternoon, Sarah and Roland return bearing gifts and flowers and looking refreshed. I feel guilty for feeling put upon.
I ask Sarah about Terry, who obviously plays a significant part in Alice’s life. Sarah has no idea who he is.

So far I am still only half way through Moby Dick, at the bit where the man falls into the cavity of the whale and has to be rescued before he drowns in the blubber. Today I hear an anecdote about Woody Allen on the Radio. When asked if there was anything in his past life that he would do differently, allegedly he thought for a few seconds and said ‘Yes, I wouldn’t read Moby Dick.’ All my complacency about having struggled thus far with one of the great books of the Western Canon evaporates. How can I improve my mind when the means I select to do so are in dispute like this? Feel quite disheartened.